Elegance and Innocence (9 page)

‘He thinks he looks young!’ she hisses at me, leaning dramatically across the table, as if discretion were a consideration. ‘I mean, he said to me the other day, “I don’t think I look a day past thirty-five.” I nearly choked on my cappuccino!’ (They must have been out.)

She’s speaking to me but her eyes never leave the door, just in case someone thinner, prettier, or more chic walks in. This almost never happens. I’m just beginning to confide in her that I think maybe my husband and I might have a serious problem too, when suddenly she screams, grabs my arm violently and yanks me across the table. ‘My God! Louise!’ she gasps. ‘That’s the handbag I was telling you about! There!’

I smile and nod.

I’m used to Nicki by now. And I’m used to her ignoring me.

Nicki is one of those women who only has one girl-friend
at a time. She wears friends out with her constant demands for attention but is too competitive to tolerate more than one extra female in her life. I’ve known this for a while. However, cultivating friends has never been my forte. Although I’m perfectly sociable – happy to spend an hour or so in idle chit-chat with any number of people, the thing I’m not terribly good at is the kind of honest self-revelation and shared intimacies that are the backbone of a lasting female friendship. I long to be open and informal, if only my life weren’t such a mess. But now is not the time. After all, if I started confiding my innermost problems to someone, I’d have to do something about them. And I’m not ready for that yet. Someday, when I’ve pulled myself together, maybe I’ll have a real chum of the heart.

In the meantime, I’m not expected to share any deep personal confidences with Nicki; I’m only required to show up and tag along. And tagging along will do me just fine. It’s easy, undemanding – we talk about nothing more taxing than new lipstick formulations and, even though I could never afford it, the benefits of Pilates versus Hatha yoga techniques. And there’s a certain amount of glamour involved in these weekly escapes. I enjoy basking in the chaotic splendour and excess of Nicki World, complete with multi-million pound homes, £100 face crèmes, and £4 organic lattes, while clinging perversely to the reassuring knowledge that, for all their money, Nicki and
Dan are still incredibly unhappy. When your own life remains a baffling, unresolved puzzle, there are few things more comforting than to be surrounded by fellow struggling souls.

When we’ve downed enough caffeine to bring us to tears, we walk back to Nicki’s and dump our bags in the Moroccan style living room. Almost everything that Nicki and Dan lose is eventually discovered lying camouflaged against the overwhelming profusion of kilim cushions that populate this room. They’ve even managed to create curtains out of old Oriental carpets, so that sitting in it is like being swallowed by a giant carpet bag.

Then we climb up to Nicki’s Victorian study and she sits in front of her computer, which folds out from a unit made to look like an antique dressing table, and I sit on the daybed. The daybed is an original, painfully uncomfortable and obviously designed to keep Victorian ladies very much awake.

‘OK. Right.’ Nicki turns on the computer, clicks into our file and pages down to where we left off.

‘Here we are, page fifteen,’ she announces triumphantly.

No matter how much work we do or how often we meet, we’re always on page fifteen.

‘OK, so how did we leave it then?’ I try to gather my enthusiasm.

‘Jan was just about to reveal to Aaron why she’d left home.’

‘Oh, yeah. Good. And what did we decide about that?’

Nicki checks through the notes we made at coffee.

‘You know, I don’t think we came to any firm conclusions about that one.’

‘Did we have any ideas?’

She flicks through again. ‘I’m not really seeing anything that can be called a
solid
idea.’

‘Oh. OK. Never mind.’ I haul myself out of the sagging centre of the daybed. ‘Right. Let’s get brainstorming!’

The room goes dead. A dog barks somewhere in the distance. Nicki gnaws at a hangnail.

Suddenly, like the voice of God, the sound of Dionne Warwick singing ‘Walk On By’ floats down the stairs. Nicki’s on her feet in a flash.

‘My God, I can’t
believe
he’s doing that now! The bastard!’

‘Doing what?’ I ask.

‘He’s playing Dionne Warwick!’ she shrieks. Flinging the door open, she screams up the stairs. ‘I know what you’re doing, you bastard! I
know
what you’re doing!’

‘My God, Nicki, what’s he doing?’ I’m missing the point badly.

‘He’s
exercising
!’ she screams, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t you understand? The bastard will be bouncing all over the treadmill next!’ She cradles her head in her beautifully manicured hands. ‘I’m getting a tension headache. I can feel it right
here
.’ She points to the top of her left temple. ‘I can’t
work this way. I just can’t. Do you mind? I
have
to get out of here.’

So we go shopping.

Shopping with Nicki takes stamina. It takes patience. And it takes great fortitude.

I’m fine as long as we stick to coffee shops and her house but as soon as we go shopping, real, proper clothes shopping, the enormous gulf between her life and mine is ruthlessly revealed. Suddenly all the cuddly
Hello!
glamour and intimacy we’ve shared evaporates and I’m keenly aware of a sharp, insurmountable shift in status.

Firstly, she’s tall, incredibly slender, with long legs and a handsome bust. So it’s like, well, like shopping with a model.

Secondly, she shops at Prada and Loewe, Harvey Nichols, and Jo Malone – stores well beyond my meagre budget. I’m used to doing my Columbo impression, shambling around the changing rooms of Harvey Nichols in my second-hand trench coat while she parades through the department in her knickers, grabbing piles of garments in all conceivable colours and styles. The shop assistants love her. They look upon me as a badly groomed pet.

Occasionally, Nicki encourages me to try something on. There are awful moments, embedded in my memory, of standing in front of a changing-room mirror in a badly fitting dress, my legs unshaven, wearing a pair of worn out plimsolls, only to have Nicki emerge from the neighbouring
cubical in exactly the same dress (but a size smaller), looking, yes, like a model.

It’s the shop assistants I feel for most. They avert their eyes and smile and lie. The minutes stretch like years while they desperately try to make a sale to one of us, to both of us, and then neither of us.

Nicki frowns, pouts and checks for non-existent panty lines while I crawl backwards into the cubical, desperate to hide again under my trench coat and brown beret. Later, I help her carry her bags from the shop. She smiles and pats me on the head and I listen to how hard it is to find clothes that fit when you’re really a size six and nearly five foot nine on the way back home in the car.

If she shot me, it would be quicker and less painful.

That’s our normal routine, only it’s about to change.

Thanks to Madame Dariaux, the next time I meet her, I’m not wearing a brown beret or my second-hand trench. And I’ve already been shopping. By myself.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while; building up to it. Normally, I don’t even allow myself to window shop; I tell myself I don’t have the money and therefore it’s torture even to look. Or I tell myself I’m too fat; I’ll shop when I’m taller (when I’m five foot nine and a size six). But ever since I wore the navy pinafore dress into work, Colin’s been hounding me, calling me ‘The Vixen’. And then on Saturday, the most extraordinary thing happened.

Someone noticed me.

A man.

I was on my lunch break and famished. Not just hungry but ravenous. I’d run to Prêt à Manger and bought a tuna salad and a chocolate brownie. Then, back in the theatre, I hid inside the empty auditorium, tucked away in one of the ancient red velvet boxes to eat. Eating is, in fact, putting it politely. What I was actually doing was savaging my food, complete with little grunting noises; leaning in close to the plastic container for maximum intake in the minimum amount of time. It was the kind of eating a girl only does on her own, usually in front of the television, dressed in a pair of pyjamas she hasn’t been out of all day. Except, I wasn’t alone; there was someone watching me.

I didn’t recognize him. Wearing jeans and a faded blue sweatshirt, he had dark, almost black hair and brown, heavy eyes.

He just stood there, hands crammed into his pockets, staring at me. And when I caught sight of him, I nearly choked on a caper.

‘That’s a funny place to eat,’ he smiled.

Oh God, a techy, I thought disparagingly. One of those guys who paint scenery while exposing their bum cracks. Piss off and leave me alone.

‘If I go upstairs, they’ll nick my brownie and I’m really hungry,’ I explained curtly. I turned my attention once again to the total annihilation of my feast but he continued
to stand there, digging his hands ever deeper into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.

‘Are you new here? I don’t recognize you,’ he continued amiably.

‘No. I work in the box office.’ I finished each sentence like I was finishing the conversation but he lingered on, enduring my silence and indifference. I picked lamely at my food. He was putting me off my stride – I felt self-conscious and all too aware of the fact I was eating my tuna salad with a spoon.

He asked me some more questions, about the box office hours and what I thought of the company, but mostly he stared at me. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing but it made me nervous and uncomfortable. Eventually, I threw my salad away and made my excuses. Back in the box office, I ranted to Colin about my ruined lunch.

‘Well, my little Vixen, what do you expect?’ he laughed, pouring me a cup of sugary tea. ‘He likes you.’

‘Me?! Get
real
, Col.’

‘Face facts, Ouise. The man fancies you. And by the way, he isn’t just a techy: he’s our new hot-shot director and his name’s Oliver Wendt. Bit of a dish, if you ask me.’

I felt odd – slightly ill, tingly and adolescent.

‘Fancies me?’ I echoed.

Colin gave me a hug from behind. ‘Yes, Louise. Fancies you. Better get used to it.’

When I left the theatre at the end of the day, Oliver
Wendt was having a cigarette on the front steps of the building.

For someone I’d never noticed before, he suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

‘Good night, Louise,’ he called after me.

I stopped and turned. ‘You know my name.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, stubbing the cigarette end out under his heel. ‘And my name’s Oliver, so now you know mine.’ He was looking straight into my eyes. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, echoing around the seemingly hollow recess of my head. I turned away and smiled to myself.

‘Good night, Oliver,’ I called, and as my voice drifted off behind me, I felt sure he was smiling too.

I walked home as slowly as I could, reluctant to lose the buzz of adrenaline that coursed through my limbs. And that night, as I lay beside my husband in bed, for once I didn’t fall into a coma of sleep.

Sunday I got up early, long before my husband was conscious, and made my way to Oxford Street. I went to Top Shop and wandered around the cavernous store for hours, mesmerized by the video screens, pulsating music, and vast selection of clothing.

At last, after trying on what was easily half the stock, I settled on a pair of steely grey, wide-legged trousers and a pale pink, fitted cardigan top. Then, invigorated by my purchases, I walked across the street to Jones and bought a
pair of black ankle boots with a kitten heel. And suddenly, in a single afternoon, the thing I had never allowed myself to do was done. The brown beret and second-hand trench coat were gone and I emerged, butterfly-like in all my Top Shop glory.

Monday, I’m due to meet Nicki in Tom’s at noon. I get to Tom’s a little late, and Nicki’s already there, guzzling a latte with all the desperation of a junkie. She looks up and I wave. But instead of waving back, she just frowns at me. Something’s wrong with this picture.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say, piling my coat on the chair between us. ‘Been here long?’

She’s examining me, her eyes registering every detail of my being. ‘You look different,’ she concludes.

‘Yes,’ I smile, pleased she’s noticed.

‘Those trousers are
new!
’ This is not an observation but an indignant accusation.

‘Yes.’ I pull out a chair and swivel my hips proudly.

‘When did you go shopping?’ she demands.

‘On Sunday.’

I sit down and a young man with spiky hair and an apron comes over to take my order.

‘And what can I get for you?’ He’s smiling and his eyes are gleaming. Normally I have to wave my hands in the air like an air traffic controller before anyone takes any notice of me, so this makes a nice change. I smile back.

‘What’s good today?’ I ask.

‘Well … there’s the soup, which today is roasted red pepper and avocado, it’s a cold soup but then,’ he winks at me, ‘you seem like a cold soup kinda person.’

‘Do I indeed!’ I giggle.

Nicki can’t stand it. ‘We don’t have time for that! We’ve got work to do.’

‘I could bring it right away,’ he offers. So accommodating.

‘That would be great, and an orange juice please. Thanks.’

‘No trouble. Freshly squeezed?’

‘Of course.’

‘I should’ve known,’ he smiles.

‘Excuse me!’ Nicki throws her cup down onto the saucer. ‘I ordered something almost twenty minutes ago, if you don’t mind!’

‘Certainly.’ He winks at me again as he leaves. Nicki’s outraged.

‘The service here is appalling. And the food’s gone right downhill. God, I’ve had enough of this. Come on.’ She slaps a fiver down on the table. ‘Let’s go to Angelo’s instead.’ She pulls on her black Prada duffel coat and storms down the steps.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say to the spiky-haired young man, as I run to catch her up at the door.

Nicki’s cooling her heels in the street. ‘Listen, let’s just go home,’ she says. ‘I can make us something to eat.’